CT or COIN?
Obama must choose this week between two radically different Afghanistan policies.
Obama has to choose one approach or the other this week, if he hasn't done so already. Afghanistan will fill the agenda at next week's NATO conference. He has said that he'll ask the allies to step up their involvement. But he can't expect them to accede unless he requests specific measures and explains how they fit into a clear strategic context, and he can't do that unless he decides what the strategy is.
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Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and author of the book, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com. Follow him on Twitter.
Photograph of a U.S. Marine in Afghanistan by John Moore/Getty Images.